a third, with an accent which seriously impeached
his truthfulness. In order to escape
from these importunate rascals, who were every
moment getting bolder, he threw himself into
the first street-car which happened to pass; he
sat down, gazed out of the windows and soon
became so thoroughly absorbed in the animated
scenes which moved as in a panorama before his
eyes, that he quite forgot where he was going.
The conductor called for fares, and received an
English shilling, which, after some ineffectual
expostulation, he pocketed, but gave no change.
At last after about an hour's journey, the car
stopped, the conductor called out "Central
Park," and Halfdan woke up with a start. He
dismounted with a timid, deliberate step, stared
in dim bewilderment at the long rows of palatial
residences, and a chill sense of loneliness
crept over him. The hopeless strangeness of
everything he saw, instead of filling him with
rapture as he had once anticipated, Sent a cold
shiver to his heart. It is a very large affair,
this world of ours--a good deal larger than it
appeared to him gazing out upon it from his
snug little corner up under the Pole; and it was
as unsympathetic as it was large; he suddenly
felt what he had never been aware of before--
that he was a very small part of it and of very
little account after all. He staggered over to a
bench at the entrance to the park, and sat long